


Call Me Home

by aurumdalseni (kyo_chan)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, czernsey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 11:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20227126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyo_chan/pseuds/aurumdalseni
Summary: Noah didn't get a choice about dying, but he did have a choice in his sacrifice. And it means he has a place to call home, even when he should have disappeared completely.





	Call Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1 of Gansey Week! I think I accidentally hit the mood of all three prompts - out of time/live forever/love you til the very end. I'm very excited to be participating and modding this event. I hope you enjoy!

When he was alive, Noah loved kids.

He joked about hating his sisters, because that’s just what brothers did, but he would have done anything for them. He pulled skate tricks at the park just to show off for a little kid with wide eyes. On Henrietta softball nights, he would hand over a fold of bills to the cashier at Harry’s Gelato for the horde of teammates with their dusty uniforms and messy hair.

As he took his last breaths on the ley line, he didn’t expect to find himself dying next to a kid. Impossible as it seemed, he somehow knew that miles and miles separated them, but if he reached out with his spirit, he could touch the boy. Noah’d gotten his face beaten in by his own skateboard and yet he felt absolute anguish, not for himself, but for the fact that he could only tell what he was looking at by the fact that it was human shaped. Otherwise, it was a writhing mess of bees — no, hornets. Bravely, that little boy, who was no more than glimpses of his loafers or tufts of his hair, didn’t make a single sound. Noah thought he might have heard wailing from places inside him sound didn’t come from. Sometimes it was the kid’s voice, sometimes it was his own.

They were dying. And Noah didn’t think that was fair. Not even 18 himself, it was appalling to him that this little guy was getting stung to death in a world that was apparently full of magic. Magic Noah wouldn’t live long enough to experience and magic this boy probably still believed in. Noah tried to think of something he could say…transmit…whatever it was that he—

_Gansey_, voices whispered, or maybe it was one whisper, Noah couldn’t really tell. Beyond him, he could hear himself choking on his own blood. He could feel it in his nose, stinging his eyes. And farther still, along this impossible distance between him and the other kid, the constant buzz of angry insects was a terrible harmony. Gansey. GanseyGanseyGansey. Was that the boy’s name? What should Noah say? What would he want to hear? Something brave. Something magical. Noah had been sacrificed for power, an ugly, selfish kind of power. Did he have a choice in where that power went? His body twitched and convulsed, struggling to live in a losing battle.

_Rex Corvus, parate Regis Corvi._

King…King…Raven…King?

_Glendower_ _…_

Is that the power they’d woken? Is this what he was dying for? It hadn’t been his choice. He didn’t want to die, and certainly not like this. His family, oh God, this kid’s family too. Noah tasted blood instead of tears, but the pain was the same. He didn’t want to die. It wasn’t his choice. But he would chose now. If he really had to die… He reached out.

_You will live because of Glendower_, he told the boy. He said that to Gansey, and he called upon all of the dramatic countenance of school plays where he’d landed the character with less than five lines, but oh he declared those lines with all his vibrant heart. _Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not. _

There were voices around them both now, not just the mysterious ones he could only hear in this timeless, wrinkle in space, but the ones beyond them. Whelk, screaming children calling for the adults in horror. Noah felt the entire universe shift, it seemed. His heart stopped. Gansey’s started. He was extinguished. Gansey was revived.

Long live the king.

_/_

_Surgit. Gansey. Gansey. Gansey_ _…_

Noah woke up with the ley line, reaching out longingly to something. He recognized the sensation of being pulled, and he followed where it led. To the abandoned church where his body had been buried, hastily and carelessly, something never to be found again. He stepped delicately over the spot; he knew it all too well. But the dirt wasn’t fresh anymore, sprinkled with bits of crabgrass and those clover-like plants that weren’t clover and definitely not very lucky for him now. The memory of death, of dying, haunted his steps, but he could actually walk, and the hands he held out before him looked like they could touch things. Was this even real?

Noah walked, even when his path strayed from the direct lay of the energy line. He walked until he reached a mammoth of a building, seemingly abandoned, and he recalled passing by it when he lived. In front of it, parked in well overgrown grass and reeds, an entire ecosystem eating away the lot, was an impossibly bright Mustang. No, Noah scolded himself, peering closer at it. _Camaro_. God, it was beautiful. He ran his hand over the spoiler, wiped a smudge off of the tail light, admired the racing stripes. This car existed to go fast .Noah loved fast. He loved whoever this car belonged to, and he hadn’t even met them yet.

He drifted inside, heard something moving above him on the second floor and climbed the stairs. Noah wasn’t one to just walk in where he wasn’t invited when he’d been alive, but he really had nothing to lose now. He needed to know why he was awake. He needed to know when it was, how he could touch things. He reached a door at the top of the stairs, and it wasn’t locked. It was barely closed. Noah considered turning back, but instead he pushed open the door to quietly peek inside.

_Gansey_.

Something that felt impossibly like a frayed connection mended itself and sparked back to life. He stared at a boy his age — well, the age he’d been when he’d died, and Noah’s spirit recognized him a split second faster than his mind. It was _him_, the one that had almost died on the same day Noah actually _did_ die. This was the boy Noah _saved_. All at once, he understood the quest burning in Gansey’s chest, the longing in his eyes, the need to make something of his life. He also knew that Gansey had come to Henrietta to find it, the ley lines had drawn him here, they’d brought him home. The connection was imperfect, but now that Gansey stood near the line with him, it was strong. That was why Noah was awake, that was why he longed for things he couldn’t name. They shared a bond, they shared a quest, they shared a king.

_Glendower_, the voice-that-could-be-many-voices whispered for the first time in seven years.

Noah ached.

Gansey was beautiful.

He was home.

As if something had settled in place with that realization, Gansey finally noticed him. In the split second it took for that connection to come to life in him, his hazel eyes squinted at Noah as if he’d intruded. It broke Noah’s heart, and his spirit reached for the line, pulled it up like an offering. It answered him, tangling around his chilled fingers, and he could feel it reaching for Gansey too. The distrust melted from his face, smoothed away into a smile that was awkward and warm. Noah remembered smiling like that when it mattered. Gansey walked toward him, all bright color, sun-kissed skin and yearning. Noah froze, braced himself to slip back into the timeless dark, back into the ground with his body. But then, Gansey put a hand on his shoulder.

“Noah,” he greeted fondly, “it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Glancing down at Gansey’s hand, resting on Noah’s Aglionby sweater, Noah was reminded that magic was real. Gansey had lived. Noah had died. And the ley line fondly strengthened their bond, softened the effect of time and death between them. Noah felt like he belonged somewhere for the first time in years.

“Yeah,” Noah answered with a laugh that was barely a glimmer of what it had once been when he was alive. “’Bout time you came back.” A pause. “Gansey.”

“Well, there was a lot of,” Gansey waved his hand like the rest of his life had gotten in the way of this moment, this reunion. He never finished saying what there was a lot of, but Gansey was a part of him now, and Noah was a part of Gansey. A lot of life had been lived since they’d last been on the ley line together. A lot of life and pain and hope and earnest searching for magic. “But I’ve found my way back home now.” Gansey looked pleased to say it, the words accompanied by a squeeze to Noah’s shoulder. It was like Gansey hadn’t even noticed how cold he was. Or it didn’t matter.

Home.

Noah nodded.

He was home.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me about Gansey and TRC at my [tumblr](oldkingyounggod.tumblr.com)!


End file.
